This is a great recipe to work on your knife skills–thinly slicing those kumquats–and it's a nicely flexible jam that can be used not only on toast, but with good cheese and crackers for party hors de oeuvres, in a summertime BBQ marinade for chicken or pork (think sticky and gooey, combined with soy sauce and some fresh grated ginger) and it's great in baked desserts like these apricot bars. Only instead of apricot bars you're crafting kumquat bars. With blueberries on top. Dee-lish.

As you can tell, I like my preserves to be able to play double duty and have plenty of uses. There's only so much toast with jam one needs, and from now on, the food I'm preserving has got to work in multiple ways. Isn't that a great challenge? Oh it's on.

In 2011? This year's food preserving is about multi-use, flavor packed, low sugar foods. And if I didn't have a freezer full of god damn strawberry freezer jam, I'd make the kumquat marmalade. So you should make it. Go on. It's delicious. (Also, note to AdRi: start eating your strawberry freezer jam!)